The Secret Garden

Martha’s younger brother Dickon is a boy of 12 with a funny face. He has round blue eyes, a wide mouth, and a smile that seems to cover his whole face. He loves nature and wild things. He understands them and speaks their languages. He tames and nurses wild creatures, and his sister Martha says he can “whisper things out o’ th’ ground” (51). Dickon recognizes Mary as an injured wild thing who needs to be guarded like a missel thrush with a nest.

At Mary’s first sight of Dickon, he is playing a pipe in the garden, surrounded by listening animals, an image meant to show him as the embodiment of the Greek nature god, Pan. In Greek mythology, Pan is a god of fields, shepherds, and forests. He has the horns and legs of a goat, and he is usually shown playing a set of pipes called a Syrinx made from seven or nine river reeds bound together.

Dickon also represents the sprite Puck. His upturned nose, curly, rust-red hair, and broad smile describe a “puckish” face. Puck was sometimes shown with the legs of a goat, so he is considered an alternate–and a little more tame–version of Pan. Puck had several names, one of which was “Robin Goodfellow,” which links him to the robin that shows Mary the way into the garden. Dickon’s name is another connection with Puck. Dickon is a variation of Richard, and Richard is sometimes shortened to Robin.

The author intends for Dickon to be seen as a nature spirit, the personification of the masculine counterpart to Mother Nature, which gives him a unique perspective on the natural world and allows him to help both Mary and Colin to heal.

Colin is thin and pale with a sharp, delicate face and very large dark eyes. He and Mary are cousins of the same age and both orphans. Neither has ever had the loving attention of a parent. Where Mary is shown as ungirlishly assertive and disagreeable, Colin is shown to be weak and unmanly. He has been told all his life that he is sick and will probably not live to adulthood, making him morbid (obsessed with death and disease) and hysterical (a term generally used to describe overly emotional females). Colin represents death. He lives in a dark room with no windows. He is weak and frail and believes he will never live to grow up. Mary resurrects Colin from the underworld by taking him out of his room and into the garden.

When Mary refuses to let Colin dominate her with his tantrums, he must use more mature and appropriate ways to get along with her. She shows him there are acceptable ways and times to be a young Rajah, as she calls him. At other times, she forces him to apply his mind and curiosity to get what he wants. Once Mary has focused him in a more mature direction, he takes an interest in science—or magic—believing them to be the same.

“Craven” means cowardly, but although Colin is afraid of death, he is not a coward like his father. When Mary convinces him that he is not sick and not going to die, he embraces life and the future with determination and strength of will.

Round, rosy, and good-natured, Martha is too frank and outspoken to have been hired in a normal household, but Mrs. Medlock knows and respects Martha’s mother. Martha is the perfect person to watch over Mary; she has 11 younger brothers and sisters, so she is too experienced and too good-natured to be put off by Mary’s disagreeableness. Martha is the first person who has ever told Mary there was anything wrong with her manners.

Mary and Martha in The Secret Garden parallel the sisters in the biblical story of Mary and Martha. (Luke 10:38–42) In the biblical story, when Jesus and his companions stayed at Mary and Martha’s home, Martha shows her love by serving and caring for her guests. Mary shows her love by sitting at the teacher’s feet and learning from him. Martha becomes cross with Mary for not caring for their guests (and leaving all the work to her). Jesus scolds Martha and explains that people show love differently and have different roles to play.

In The Secret Garden, Martha is a servant, caring for other people. She is paid to work at the Manor, but even at home, she takes great delight in helping her mother and caring for her little brothers and sisters. She becomes an adoptive older sister to Mary, taking care of her as she would any of her young siblings. Mary Lennox serves a different role. She doesn’t serve other people; her job is to learn about and understand nature and the garden, which in this case represents divinity. Neither girl is right or wrong. They both find happiness and fulfillment in roles that suit their personalities.

The very first thing Mary hears about her uncle is that he is “a hunchback,” but when Mary meets him, she sees that there is nothing unusual about his appearance except that his shoulders seem a little crooked. Mostly, he is just thin and pale and sad. He still grieves the loss of his wife Lilias after 10 years.

“Craven” means cowardly, and Archibald acts like a coward by always traveling and avoiding Misselthwaite Manor. It takes courage to stay and deal with the pain of loss, and Archibald is not courageous. By staying away from home, he is also running away from his son, fearing the pain he will feel if Colin dies and hating the living reminder of his loss. By running away, he selfishly abandons a little boy to a life of loneliness and fear.

Archibald wants Mary to be happy, and he wants to do what is best for her. He is wise enough to take Mrs. Sowerby’s advice about what will help Mary the most—being allowed to run and play by herself for a while. Overall, he is a good person; he is merely weak. When he wakes from his long grieving, he grows stronger and will be a good father to Colin now that Mary has restored the garden and awakened his wife’s spirit.

Mrs. Medlock is the housekeeper at Misselthwaite Manor—a stout woman with red cheeks and black eyes. She doesn’t like Mary very much, thinking she is plain and disagreeable looking. Like everyone in the neighborhood of Misselthwaite Manor, she likes and respects Susan Sowerby. Mrs. Medlock thinks of herself as the sort of person who takes no nonsense from children, but Colin, with his tantrums, has her completely in his power.

Ben Weatherstaff, the gardener, has a surly, weather-beaten face, but when he smiles, he looks much nicer. For his grumpy disposition, he gets along well with Dickon, the robin, and Mary. He can appreciate Mary because he recognizes something of himself in her: “We’re neither of us good-lookin’ and we’re both of us as sour as we look. We’ve got the same nasty tempers, both of us, I’ll warrant” (25). Her encounters with him give Mary guidance and a sense of who she is and who she might become.

Many stories have a wise old man character like Ben, whose role in the story is to provide guidance or to impart wisdom to the protagonist. Ben tells Mary things she doesn’t know about herself, for example, that she is plain and bad-tempered like him. He also explains the robin to her and tells her how to know whether a rosebush is alive or dead.

In fairytales, the wise old man may be a wizard like Merlin. In the ordinary world, he may be more like a hermit or other holy man. Ben is like a hermit in that he has few friends and prefers the company of birds and flowers. He enjoys solitude, and if he sees Mary coming, he often tries to avoid her simply because he prefers his own company.

The author names the character “Weatherstaff” because, as a gardener, his work is closely connected to the weather, and old men are often depicted leaning on a staff for support. Wizards are associated with staffs, which are also tools of power. Ben cannot be said to have power over the weather but being a gardener does give him the power to coax life out of the earth. Ben doesn’t carry a staff, but he often leans on his shovel or hoe as another old man might lean on a staff.

Mrs. Sowerby plays the role of the Wise Woman who dispenses advice, assistance, and healing to the community. The author’s description of her as a “mother creature” suggests that she is not just an individual but also the embodiment of the very nature of mother-ness. When she finally appears in the story in person, she wears a blue cloak. In art, the color blue represents the divine because it is the color of the sky, which is associated with heaven. Because of this, the Virgin Mary—the Christian embodiment of motherhood—is usually depicted wearing the color blue.

With 12 children, she has great insight into children and their needs. She recognizes that Mary needs exercise and play to mature. She understands that Colin and Mary need to butt heads to learn that neither owns the whole world. She cultivates her daughter Martha’s love of productive work while allowing Dickon to be useful in his unique way by studying and understanding the world.

The Wise Woman sometimes acts as a fairy godmother by giving advice and magical gifts that enable children to overcome challenges. Mrs. Sowerby acts like a fairy godmother to Mary by telling Mrs. Medlock and Mr. Craven what to do in Mary’s best interest and sending her the skipping rope—which is for Mary a magical gift that helps her grow strong and healthy.

The robin of the story is based on a real bird that Francis Hodgson Burnett loved when she was a child. Robins traditionally symbolize spring and rebirth. The robin in The Secret Garden also represents the spirit of nature through its association with Robin Goodfellow (Puck). Mary’s robin acts as a guide, first bringing her to the key and, later, when it decides she is ready, to the door that lets her into the garden.

Mary’s bird is a European robin, which is not closely related to the American robin. They look quite different and have different personalities and habits. The European robin lives nearer to the ground and more often comes into contact with people, which makes it a friendlier and more personable bird.